Expel the immoral brother!
1 ① You have become news with a case of im morality, and such a case that is not even found among pagans. Yes, one of you has taken as wife his own stepmother. 2And you feel proud! Should you not be in mourning instead and expel the one who did such a thing. 3For my part, although I am physically absent, my spirit is with you and, as if present, I have already passed sentence on the man who committed such a sin. 4Let us meet together, you and my spirit, and in the name of our Lord Jesus and with his power, 5you shall deliver him to Satan, for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit be saved in the day of Judgment.
6This is not the time to praise yourselves. Do you not know that a little yeast makes the whole mass of dough rise? 7Throw out, then, the old yeast and be new dough. If Christ became our Passover, you should be un leavened bread. 8Let us celebrate, therefore, the Passover, no longer with old yeast, which is sin and perversity; let us have unleavened bread, that is purity and sincerity.
9In my last letter I instructed you not to associate with immoral people. 10I did not mean, of course, those who do not belong to the church and who are immoral, exploiters, embezzlers or worshipers of idols. Otherwise you would have to leave this world. 11What I really meant was to avoid and not to mingle with anyone who, bearing the name of brother or sister, becomes immoral, exploiter, gossip, drunkard, embezzler. In which case you should not even eat with them.
12Why should I judge outsiders? But you, are you not to judge those who are inside? 13Let God judge those outside, but as for you, drive out the wicked person from among you.
- 1 Cor 5,1 Paul knows that such a sinner cannot be brought to repentance unless he experiences the bitterness of his treachery. So the community must ask that he suffer in health and belongings (Paul says delivered to Satan for the ruin of the flesh: see in Job 1:12 and 2:6 the meaning of delivered to Satan). This ex-communication is not merely a human gesture. What the Church binds on earth is bound in Heaven (Mt 18:18). God is committed to send trials which may be at the same time a warning to the Church and a way of repentance for the sinner. You should be unleavened bread (v. 7). The believers have been spiritually raised with Christ. As the Jews used unleavened bread to celebrate the Passover, in the same way the Christians have to be, in a figurative sense unleavened bread, that is, they must lead a sinless life before God, and so worthily celebrate their Passover, which is the Resurrection of Christ. Jesus compared the kingdom of Heaven to yeast that leavens the whole mass. Here Paul uses the same comparison to show how evil spreads everywhere. Those who do not belong to the Church (Paul says: those of this world) (v. 10). Believers are not afraid of living among sinners, because they themselves are, first, sinners among others (1 Jn 1:8-9) and has as mission to make known the mercy of Christ who ate with sinners. Yet they are not willing to live in a Church community with those who are hardened in sin and refuse to put right a public scandal. Why should I judge outsiders? (v. 12). Jesus taught us the way to follow, but we cannot demand of unbelievers that they understand and accept our moral standards regarding reconciliation, sex, abortion, as long as their conscience is unable to recognize the criteria of the Gospel. The authorities of the Church are not commissioned to condemn them, but to be witnesses to the light.
